Ice Maiden
They said that I was cold, my sisters did, because I had no use for the young men of our village, with their harsh voices and their swaggering ways. They called me ice-maiden and snow-queen. They dragged me to the fire and pressed my face down close to its mocking red tongues, until my skin tightened and my breath withered in my throat, and I cried without making a sound.
“This will melt her heart!” one crowed.
“No, no; she has no heart, only a block of ice within her breast,” another jeered. My father looked on, but did nothing to stop them, and I wept the harder as I saw that his frown was for me alone.
And so, when the moon had long since chased away the sun, and snowflakes fell thick as cherry blossom in the springtime winds, I ran from my village. I ran far; but when I
